GOG community manager Sean Halliday was fired last week for several high profile missteps on their Twitter account. My reaction:

"He claims that while he’s sorry for the two inflammatory Tweets he sent there was never anything malicious behind them."

That seems like a sign that he was unqualified to be a community manager.

Checking the eurogamer report, GOG managers refused to apologize?

What!?

— Kynetyk (@KynetykKnows) December 7, 2018

So what’s going on in this mess?

Sean Halliday

Let’s take Halliday’s telling of events at face value. He was brought in to help settle down the forums, had some success with this, and then wanted to add some life to the GOG Twitter account. That shows initiative, and he apparently had success too. All good for him. The story of how his termination impacted him, and his family, is very sad.

HOWEVER

When you are in a public facing position, you must be EXTREMELY careful. You are now representing the company. Your voice is the voice of the company. If you say something that the company wouldn’t want, the company is now accountable for it. He was careless and got the company into trouble. This could be looked past once, and it was, but when it becomes a pattern, it is a problem. This is why I said that he essentially admitted to being unqualified to be a Community Manager. He needs to be supervision to ensure that his communication represents the company appropriately.

If we’re taking him at his word, then I would extrapolate that he was given too much authority without the appropriate experience and seniority. He was a guy that had a couple good ideas, and then got the keys to the kingdom without any oversight or regulation. He needed someone to help teach him where the line is, and how to stay in line with the company image. If that’s the case, then he wasn’t given the tools to succeed. If so then I do have some sympathy.

HOWEVER 2

This is something for which that Halliday should also have been on alert after the first instance. It is still reasonable to expect someone to check the content and implications of their posts after causing controversy like that.

All of that said, there are also factors with Halliday that could call his sincerity into question. Previous writings, posts, and his new employer have been referenced by some to indicate an established pattern of behavior into which that the transgressive tweets fit.

(Note: I haven’t verified these myself, but the claims of a pattern are worth noting for consideration)

GOG

Where things get really weird is with GOG itself.

GOG has had 3 controversial tweets, and Halliday only wrote 2 of them. This calls into question the general community management practices they use. Either that, or the lack of managerial guidance to tie the community management voice together and keep it within guidelines. Especially considering that in Halliday’s latest tweet, an actual apology was conspicuously absent. This was apparently a deliberate choice. That’s the part that really baffles me.

This all adds up to the personal feeling that GOG are simply careless with their public facing community management.

This is just a guess, but the pattern implies to me that they simply hire people and throw them in to community management positions. They do not have anyone senior to keep the team on the same page. They don’t consider this aspect of their brand something worth investing in. A problem comes up and they just don’t want to be bothered with it.

Worth remembering, too, is that customer service, and community management, while related, are different things. Having a good experience with one does not mean that a company is good at the other.

Bottom Line

I’ve never purchased from GOG. I appreciate the effort to try to keep old games going. I’ve heard good things about other practices, like return policies. But I don’t necessarily have much respect for them as an organization. Not taking responsibility for their own communications is simply unprofessional.

If Sean Halliday were to apply for a job in my department, he’d be starting at a deficit and need to do something to prove to me his sincerity and professionalism.

Because for me, professionalism is a big thing.

Kynetyk is a veteran of the games industry.  Behind the Line is to help improve understanding of what goes on in the game development process and the business behind it.  From “What’s taking this game so long to release”, to “why are there bugs”, to “Why is this free to play” or anything else, if there is a topic that you would like to see covered, please write in to kynetyk@enthusiacs.com or follow on twitter @kynetykknows